You see, it was kind of annoying walking past the fruit and seeing those lovely reflections in the oak’s tiger stripes and knowing I didn’t get the shot yesterday. Hence a second go but I seem to have had a compositional bypass. What’s most galling is that yesterday DM shot a great pic with my fruit bowl and was all apologetic that his was so much better than mine. He’s right but until we see the proof we’ll never know will we?

To be frank, this was as good as it could get in a day characterised by sheer bloody misery for me. I’ve done two lengthy sessions with the pressure washer to finish the preparation of the wall for its base coat of paint in advance of the mural. After an hour on top of a ladder in howling winds getting drenched and peppered with chips of paint I decided “enough was enough”, came inside and had a good soak in the bath saying that I’d finish the job tomorrow. Later on the sun came out and I’d recovered enough to rationalise that I’d be better off going back to finish it today so the pressure washer could get put away and I wouldn’t need to get up tomorrow knowing I had another session still to do. So, rather foolishly, I went back out and spent another half an hour finishing the job and getting another painty soaking.

It’d be impossible to describe how horrible the job was. I was cold because of a constant flow of water between my clothes and body. I was getting paint chips hurled at me and you may not think that’d be all that bad but it was like being sprayed with shards of glass. Suffice to say that I was as miserable as sin by the end but glad to have finished. The great shame is that now the wall looks worse than when I started because it’s now bitumen black. I’ve um-ed and ah-ed about whether to use a stain block on it and decided that it’s too risky not to so that’s the first job tomorrow before the wall gets painted white.

Then it’ll be a couple of months before the mural happens because it has to wait until I have shown DM "proof of concept" which will only happen after a period of reflection and after the scaffolding comes down from around the house…(and that’s another story).